An inventor claims to have developed a heat
engine that receives 700 kJ of heat from a source
at 500 K and produces 300 kJ of net work while
rejecting the waste heat to a sink at 290 K. Is this
a reasonable claim? Why?
Solution;
The maximum heat efficiency of the engine is the Carnot efficiency;
Since efficiency is defined as;
Therefore it is impossible to have a work output greater than 294kJ and therefore the inventors claim is not reasonable.
Comments